


Of All the Avengers

by trash4ficsaboutlurv



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Background Relationship, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Friendship, Light Angst, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 19:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6766033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash4ficsaboutlurv/pseuds/trash4ficsaboutlurv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set Post CACW: Sam and Rhodey have a frank discussion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of All the Avengers

**Author's Note:**

> Sam breaks into the compound to say a true good-bye to Rhodey

Sam fiddled with his hands, at the ring on his finger that still caught him by surprise when he noticed its gleam out the corner of his eye.  Rhodey had clocked it right away and his jaw had clenched – or maybe he’d been swallowing and Sam was just being too sensitive. Probably that one, right? He glanced down at Rhodey’s leg braces and his heart sank into the acid of his stomach. Nah, Sam couldn’t possibly be too sensitive in this situation.

“How are you?” he asked, not making eye contact with Rhodey, but looking around the room. Sam had never been in Rhodey’s wing of the compound, but he would have known its owner without question. There was something very Rhodey-esque about the place. The walls were a dark gray, the furnishings of a very traditional design, and if that weren’t enough, the drapes – Iron Man/War Machine curtains that didn’t match any other part of the décor. Sam would have laughed at them this time last week, but now…he looked at Rhodey’s leg braces again…now he didn’t feel much like laughing at all.

“My eyes are up here,” Rhodey sighed, waving his hand in front of Sam’s face.

“Sorry,” Sam said. He met Rhodey’s intense gaze and tried not to back down, tried not to search Rhodey’s face for bitterness or anger, the things he would’ve been feeling if their roles were reversed.

“And stop trying to shrink me,” Rhodey ordered, waving his hand again. His lip twitched and Sam couldn’t tell if it was an aborted grimace or smile. “Tony’s already sent up half a dozen therapists.”

“You’ve gone through something kinda traumatic,” Sam pointed out, his eyes dropping to the braces again, but bouncing back up easier this time.

Rhodey bit his lip. “You know what’s funny?”

“Hmm?”

“If I’d known this was gonna happen – a week ago when Secretary Ross dropped those accords on the table – if I knew Vision was going to shoot me out of the sky and paralyze me – if I knew that I was never gonna—” Rhodey grimaced. “If knew I was never going to be War Machine again, I’d still do it.”

Sam frowned, couldn’t help his, “Really?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have asked Vision to get involved,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “Could’ve walked away from the fight. Operative word: walk.”

Sam twisted the ring on his finger some more. “Rhodey, I—”

“The Sokovia Accords are in effect, you know. You’re a criminal. Technically, I should arrest you right now.” Rhodey tapped his knee, glanced at Sam’s left hand again and his jaw absolutely did clench.

“You blame Steve for all this, don’t you?” Sam asked.

Rhodey smiled, but his eyes glimmered with something rawer, uglier. “I blame _you_ for dodging that bullet,” he said and if he mostly meant it as a joke, he at least a little bit meant it sincerely. And Sam got that and he couldn’t hold it against him. “I _really_ blame Vision,” Rhodey continued, his eyes going hard. “And sense he’s a heartless robot, I think he can handle my anger, so…” He shrugged.

Sam didn’t think he should point out that Vision wasn’t exactly heartless. It was details, static in the stream.

Rhodey rubbed his thighs, traced the outlines of his braces. His fingers traced over the structure with the grace of a pianist’s. Sam was mesmerized by the movement, until Rhodey cleared his throat and continued, “But yeah, I blame Steve. I even blame Tony. I blame Rumlow and Wanda. I blame Ross. I blame me. I blame Loki and Fury and Hydra. There’s plenty of blame to go around, Sam.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah.” He twisted the ring on his finger, sliding it up to the knuckle and then pushing it back down to the base. Steve had given him that ring while they were still in the prison, before he’d even unlocked the others’ cells. Had smiled at Sam through the glass, then motioned him away from it, so he could punch it clear. He didn’t have his shield anymore. He’d pulled Sam to him and kissed him like this was their last chance and then he grabbed Sam’s hand and slid the ring on. All he’d said was his name: “Sam.”

A clock on Rhodey’s dresser ticked out the passing seconds and the hushed whir of a dozen different operating systems that kept the compound warm, oxygenated, secure, what-have-you acted like a balm on the wounded silence.

“It’s hard when everyone thinks they’re right and can do what we can do,” Rhodey finally said. “When Wanda can destroy a city in her sleep and the Winter Soldier—

“Bucky,” Sam corrected.

“When Barnes can be turned into a weapon by a couple Russian phrases. There’s no precedent for this. We’re making this up as we go and I’m not—I don’t fly by the seat of my pants. Ever.”

Sam studied Rhodey for a moment. “If someone had given a kill order on Tony, wouldn’t you do everything you could to protect him?”

Rhodey glanced at his colorful curtains, continued to run his fingers along his leg braces. “My mom called me a ‘stick in the mud’ when I was kid.” He snorted. “Her actual words to her son --because I followed the rules –her rules, for one. Not blindly, of course. I’m a black man in America. I know rules aren’t always made for us. But laws, rules, order, working within the system? That makes sense to me. Hell, I wasn’t a superhero before the Accords. Not like you and Steve. I was a soldier of the American government, authorized to use a very cool suit. I was Iron Patriot first, War Machine second, you know?”

Sam nodded.

“If someone put out a kill order on Tony, I don’t know what I’d do. And that’s the awful truth. Why’d they put the kill order out? Who did it? On what information? There shouldn’t be variables when it’s someone you love. But that’s how my brain is wired.” He leaned back on the sofa. “I had a girlfriend, Mya. Gorgeous woman, smart and funny. Perfect. And she was from Jersey and her accent cracked me up.”

Sam smiled.

“We went to see some movie. I don’t know. Some romance adventure thing. Forbidden love and kings and execution. The whole works. _Game of Thrones_ meets _Romeo and Juliet._ There was a law that forbade marriage between commoners and nobility and the story’s all about this princess and a butcher or a carpenter. Some nobody. Mya ate it all up, was bawling by the end (the princess dies of a broken heart or some shit). When we left the theater, she asked me what I’d do if we were in that situation. We were pretty serious, by the way. I was thinking of asking her to marry me.” Here, Rhodey’s eyes went to Sam’s hand again. “I knew what I was supposed to say. That nothing would stop me loving her, that I would have killed the duke, too and done all the other shit that guy did for the princess. But my mouth got ahead of me. I’m pointing out that the whole kingdom is going to fall apart because of their actions, that the princess is literally dead and it just seems like they were two incredibly selfish people. That it didn’t matter anyway, because we weren’t in that godawful movie.” Rhodey expelled a puff of air from his nose, not quite amused. He shook his head. “We broke up – me and Mya. Not right away. But what I said bothered her. It dropped into her head like a parasitic plant, roots growing and coiling and suffocating all the good in our relationship, until all she could think about was how I wouldn’t topple a kingdom for her. She kept trying to corner me into some confession where I’d let the world burn for our love and that wasn’t me. That isn’t me.” A tear slipped down Rhodey’s cheek and a sympathetic lump was growing in Sam’s throat. “So, when I say I’d do it all again, even knowing this was the result,” he shrugs. “I’m not heartless, Sam. And I didn’t take Tony’s side because I love him –although I do. I did it because he’s right. Trust me, I haven’t always been on Tony’s side about things. Ask him how I got the suit in the first place.” Rhodey smiled wistfully.

“Of all the Avengers, I’m gonna miss you the most,” Sam said finally. “You’re a good person, Rhodey. Tony’s lucky to have you. The Avengers are lucky to have you.”

Rhodey’s red-rimmed eyes look past Sam. “I’m not an Avenger anymore, Sam. I can barely walk.”

Sam swallowed against that lump in his throat. “You’re an Avenger to me. To Steve.”

Rhodey wiped his wet cheeks. “I guess you and Steve are just gonna disappear now. Or are we going to be chasing the ‘Shadow Avengers’ around the world until we all die?”

Sam smiled. “Honeymoon, first. Then, we’ll decide whether to disappear.”

Rhodey extended his hand and Sam took it in both of his.

“Be careful, Sam,” Rhodey said. “And take care of Steve. He’s stubborn and Tony’s arrogant, and they’re both hurting. I don’t think this is over.”

Sam nodded. “You take care of _you_ , okay? Mentally; emotionally.”

“I’m gonna miss you, Sam.”

“I’m gonna miss you, too.”

Sam leaned over and pulled Rhodey into a hug. “I’ll write you. Nothing that will get you in trouble. Just – we’re still friends, you know?”

Rhodey nodded into the crook of Sam’s neck, repeated: “We’re still friends.”

**Author's Note:**

> Rhodey is such a Lawful Good and I love him for it and I think that alignment lends itself to so much heartbreak and isolation, if you press it hard enough.  
> Also, if you think Sam and Steve didn't get married the second Steve freed him from that prison, you are kidding yourself, your family, everyone.


End file.
